Daniel S Peterson asked:


Artists who are endeavoring in the business of faux finishing or other art related ventures have it tough, the odds are stacked heavily against us. The business sense you need to have in order to be an entrepreneur in today’s complex world is many times squeezed out of us by the lack of business knowledge or the confused interpretation of what should be and what really is. The task of balancing business and art is a difficult thing to accomplish for most artists, it’s just not how were made and doesn’t come easy for us. The average person may be able to make a descent living doing his or her own thing, but an artist has many hurtles to overcome if he or she wants to be truly successful in this business. Becoming the businessman that succeeds in today’s economy is very difficult and exhausting.

We generally make bad decisions in business for many reasons. The biological aspects of the brain ( left versus right hemisphere) helps to cause a creativity versus organizational skills crisis. The attitude of creating art for the love of it and not for the money is a silly notion and won’t pay the bills. There are many reasons for bad decisions that help to embellishes the fatal flaws in our business practice creating problems that we could otherwise have avoided. 15 years in and out of the business I finally felt somewhat free of the artist “way of thinking”, for example bad pricing methods, giving away services, non existent marketing plans, or our infamous verbal contractual agreements etc. They were all included in my repertoire of business practices but after years of correcting and repairing bad business decisions and habits i thought I was somewhat clear, and then BAM… the economy. I soon found that builders were very much at a standstill, designers were slowing way down, Realtors were not selling, and homeowners had cut out much of their luxury item spending.

Faux finishers and other artists wear blinders protecting themselves from the mature nature of running a real business. I know many in my field of faux finishing that when success grants us a six, ten or twenty thousand dollar job we’re in many ways set for life, or so we think. We sit back at night to relax ridding the weight off our shoulders only until another month creeps by and were in it all over again, looking for the next paycheck. Thoughts cross our minds constantly about what we should be doing with our business but we procrastinate and eventually end up not doing anything at all. We are thinkers in business but not doers, that needs to change if we’re to survive in today’s economy.

Many artists did not plan on losing so many clients recently and such, are no longer in business. It’s time to focus on running a business and diversifying or you’ll be standing in line at your local warehouse waiting for an interview. For most of us our hidden talents don’t lie in the fields of computer technology, managerial accounting or in the department of research analysis. Many of us are unemployable to jobs like those mentioned because we have honed our skills throughout the years creating what we’d like to think of as the perfect career choice, but stubbornly we have dislocated ourselves from the hum drum 9 to 5 jobs that pay actual salaries. Becoming a self employed artist is an honor and it takes more guts than most people could ever dream of, but to do it right you must become the businessman 70% of the time and be the free flowing artist 30% of the time.

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